"FreeHeretic" resources

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Over at the OpenArena boards Stilgar has been posting some really fine resources that could be used to make a "FreeHeretic" project:

Stilgar has also been contributing textures for a FreeHexen II project on those boards. The textures fit the Heretic aesthetic and he has already made many more textures than Heretic had in the first place! These would be great to use as placeholders if not final textures. Here's me running a random Heretic map after doing some texture replacement with Stilgar's textures and adding the "batstaff".http://www.jeshimoth.com/jutegyte/freeheretic03.png
(Apologies for the glitchy white pixels on the green floor texture. XWE did that for some reason.)

So would anyone be up for a project like this? Leilei had the idea and mentioned it working as a branch of FreeDoom, which seems reasonable to me.

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I would avoid using a "Free*GAME*" type name though. It only worked for FreeDoom because it's almost the word "Freedom"

I had a very clever name for "Free Heretic" but then I found out the word "relaps" doesn't exist in English and you have to say "relapsed heretic" instead... (Though during my search I found hitsonim and it has the advantage of starting with an 'h', but that's far too obscure a word to be used. Plus, it sounds like "hits on him".)

Anyway, these sprites are great, though they seem to be intended for a "Free Hexen" project instead. The trees, the shrooms, the tankards, the chains, the many keys, the gargoyle statue variants...

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If this project is going to be run, there should be a huge focus on original asset control, because you'll never know, with the community (zdoom in particular) coming from copy-and-paste habitual ripping we can't risk a leak of copyrighted material to seep into the project.

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Anyway, these sprites are great, though they seem to be intended for a "Free Hexen" project instead. The trees, the shrooms, the tankards, the chains, the many keys, the gargoyle statue variants...

This is almost correct.

The story behind these is that several years ago, I set out to make a Hexen mod on GZDoom, codenamed "Black Metal Hexen" that had the two goals of A) "fixing" things that annoyed me about the original game, and B) Integrating a greater amount of gory/demonic/macabre elements as in Doom/Quake hells and black metal music/album art (hence the working title).

After a bit of playing around, I realized that what I was doing was going to require a lot of work just to have something that worked only on a proprietary game that I doubt many people play/care about any more. This was also well before the engine was even GPL'ed.

So, I decided that if I was going to have to learn/do all that stuff, I might as well go the extra mile and make a stand-alone like Freedoom, so I moved to doing a Doom TC (the engine of choice was always changing, at its peak I had some semi-working stuff laid out in EDGE, where you could walk around a partial map and kill some semi-animated monsters with a hatchet or blunderbuss. The DDF stuff and the map got nuked somewhere along the way though.)

After a time, I realized the horror and tedium of having to hand-pixel ~50+ sprite frames for every complete monster I wanted in game, and this was what stopped the project dead more than anything else. This was before I had any clue how to use 3D modeling programs to help cut some of the work, but even with it, monster spritework (and to some degree weapons spritework) remains the biggest problem (FreeDoom itself is testament to this.) So the project stagnated, but I kept all the stuff for it around, occasionally putting together a few more textures in case I ever took off with it again. When some similar projects came along, I just decided it would be better to offer up some of the stuff I'd made for use than let it languish in obscurity, since they'd been meant to be Free resources from the start anyway.

So, the stuff I made was always meant to have a Hexen vibe to it, more so than Heretic (although that had influence on some of the magic weapon designs), but it wasn't really designed as a 1:1 replacement, only having a similar mood to it. Places where stuff seems to match well are most likely the places where I said, "that thing was cool, and I want something similar."

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What do you guys think of "Blasphemer" for a title? It fits with the metal theme Stilgar's work is based upon and isn't taken according to MobyGames. I put together a logo and title screen using a GPL'ed font that very much fits with the theme and a public domain image of an inverted pentagram.

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Just tryin' to help, but he did make it himself from scratch (apart from the pickup sprite) - it just looks like the original. By your logic, couldn't you say that the FreeDoom pistol is derivative of Doom's copyrighted pistol because it looks like the original? What about all the FreeDoom textures that are based heavily off the Doom originals but made entirely from scratch?

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Would everything have to fit the same pickup messages and all like in FreeDoom? One of my weapon ideas for the old TC (one that I haven't drawn, but could probably at least put together a pickup for) was something called "Firebreather" that was a device made out of a severed dragon head and was used by making it shoot flames out of its mouth. It'd be a good functional match for the Phoenix Rod, but naturally wouldn't fit with that name.

jute gyte said:

What do you guys think of "Blasphemer" for a title? It fits with the metal theme Stilgar's work is based upon and isn't taken according to MobyGames. I put together a logo and title screen using a GPL'ed font that very much fits with the theme and a public domain image of an inverted pentagram.

Not bad! I'd probably put the text foremost for the title screen though.

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I can make gothic/medieval textures. I'd LOVE to see Heretic done in a more gothic, dark style.

Feel free to make some textures in that style! Heretic doesn't have many textures to replace, so having a strong theme is a good idea.

I'm working on assembling a placeholder .wad with all the walls replaced by Stilgar's Haktoria textures just to get something concrete accomplished on the project, but eventually having new textures would be better than reusing resources.

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Here's a .wad with a complete set of replacement walls (and a few sprites and menu images), based on Stilgar's work, with some additional stuff from FreeDoom and some minor editing by me: http://www.jeshimoth.com/jutegyte/blaswall.wad
(I am almost totally inexperienced with wad editing; feel free to tell me if I screwed something up.)

These should probably just be used as placeholders, but it's progress. Note that in the absence of good cobwebs (and a few other things) there are a few inconsequential blank things.

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Would everything have to fit the same pickup messages and all like in FreeDoom? One of my weapon ideas for the old TC (one that I haven't drawn, but could probably at least put together a pickup for) was something called "Firebreather" that was a device made out of a severed dragon head and was used by making it shoot flames out of its mouth. It'd be a good functional match for the Phoenix Rod, but naturally wouldn't fit with that name.

I think the best course of action might be a dehacked file inside the .wad, since in Heretic not only messages but also skill names and level names are available to edit that way (IIRC).

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I had a very clever name for "Free Heretic" but then I found out the word "relaps"

Relapse does though:

A relapse (etymologically, "who falls again") occurs when a person is affected again by a condition that affected them in the past. This could be a medical or psychological condition such as depression, bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis, cancer or an addiction to a drug.

For example, if someone who had problems with alcohol were to give up alcohol and then later start drinking again, this drinking might be considered a relapse. It is different from a slip or lapse in that it implies a return to previous behaviour patterns, as opposed to a one-time occurrence.

It may also, in medicine, mean the end of a remission.

relapse
–verb (used without object)
1. to fall or slip back into a former state, practice, etc.: to relapse into silence.
2. to fall back into illness after convalescence or apparent recovery.
3. to fall back into vice, wrongdoing, or error; backslide: to relapse into heresy.

–noun
4. an act or instance of relapsing.
5. a return of a disease or illness after partial recovery from it.

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As I have mentioned before, I'd be happy to make weapon sprites, and well as gothic/medieval themed textures.

I personally think a more gothic/dark theme would be really appropriate. I always wished Heretic had a little more "dark" feel about it. I'll throw some simple textures together to show what I'm looking for.